Will women determine 2012 race?

Will the women’s vote finally determine the outcome of the presidential election? Since women first got the vote, with the 19th Amendment in 1920, presidential politics has awaited this climactic moment.

Until now, election statistics have never proved that the 19th Amendment altered the outcome of any presidential race. In 2008, Barack Obama handily won the female vote. But given margins of statistical error in exit polls, the men’s choice is not determinable. In both 1992 and 1996, a similar pattern emerged in Bill Clinton’s victories.

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This could be one reason for this fierce fight over women’s issues — far more than the typical Republican vs. Democratic battle of the sexes. It has an unusually angry edge.

A recent Washington Post poll hints at a possible answer. On the surface, the poll seems a replay of 2008 — giving Obama roughly the same percentage margin over Mitt Romney as candidate Obama won against Sen. John McCain. But there’s a big difference: Romney has a 4-point lead among men. Indeed, POLITICO’s battleground poll of key swing states gives Romney a statistically significant 7-point lead among men.

Meanwhile, the nation’s female leaders are due at the White House in August, when the president is hosting a celebration for the 19th Amendment’s 92nd anniversary. Studies show that late summer pre-election surveys often track the final outcome.

Given Romney’s current weakness with women, he will likely be working from now until the GOP convention at the end of August to improve his public standing.

Experts are predicting a closer election than in 2008. But with the developing gender dynamic, it should not surprise anyone if, come Labor Day, the polls show men solidly favoring Romney with women lined up strongly behind Obama.

So this “battle of the sexes” could then set up a potentially historic climax if the president wins reelection. It would be a significant milestone, symbolic of one of the vast changes occurring in national politics.

The “gender gap” became a staple of presidential campaign commentary starting with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Exit polls from previous elections had shown no significant gender gap. The former Hollywood leading man garnered a landslide margin from men while only running at a statistical dead heat among women. He was regarded as too risky by women voters, political analysts explained.

This pattern repeated in 1988, when George H.W. Bush also won on his big margin among men and statistical tie among women.

It wasn’t until 2000 that the first statistically definitive split between the sexes emerged: Al Gore won women handily, but he lost men to George W. Bush by an estimated equal amount.

The 2004 exit poll data produced controversial results. The adjusted data suggest Sen. John Kerry likely carried the women’s vote narrowly. But he lost in the Electoral College because of Bush’s far stronger support among men.

So these current polls reveal a potentially historic wrinkle: The women’s vote could now be definitively decisive in electing the president.

For 220 years, picking the president has remained, at least in terms of statistically provable results despite the 19th Amendment, a man’s prerogative. But this may finally change in 2012.

Meanwhile, the latest polls suggest another important shift: Younger women may be the kingmakers — offsetting Romney’s gain among older white men angry at their fate in this struggling economy.

Whatever you thought you knew about women and the gender gap — think again. The battle of the sexes, with an intergenerational female undercard, may finally redefine presidential politics 92 years after the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Paul Goldman is a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia. Mark J. Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University.